Entries categorized "President"

The GOP must "stop being the stupid party." - Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

Stuck on Stupid

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, the delusional 2016 Republican presidential wannabe, made a complete ass of himself following the National Governor's Association meeting with President Obama on Monday.

With the Republican Governors Association chair, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), noticeably absent from his assigned duties, the delusional 2016 Republican presidential wannabe seized the opportunity to race over to the cameras assembled outside the White House and launched into a diatribe, accusing President Obama of "raising the white flag" on job growth and turning America into "a minimum wage economy."

Right wingers are forever going on about how the sexual revolution has brought about the decline of civilization and has been simply terrible for women due to us no longer being able to use pregnancy to force reluctant men to shotgun marry us, among other things. But this Mother Jones report from Missoula, MT clearly illustrates how antediluvian attitudes toward sexuality and women held by the prosecutors there are causing rapists to go free, tormenting female victims, and causing some victims not to even bother trying to get justice.

There was a lot of hand-wringing among progressives/secular types before, during, and after “Science Guy” Bill Nye’s debate with Creation Museum founder Ken Ham on Tuesday night, which was held at the aforementioned “museum” in Kentucky. There is certainly a good argument for avoiding such debates entirely, as Richard Dawkins does. Eschewing them is probably a wise general rule for proponents of evolution since the debate format gives undeserved credibility to evidence-free assertions like Creationism. Also, debates are too often focused on performance over substance and “winners” and “losers”. For example, Mitt Romney “won” his first Presidential debate by boldly lying about his positions and catching President Obama off-guard. But, having watched it, I’m glad that Nye took the risk with this particular debate.

To be a liberal in America is to be acutely aware of the gaping double standard that exists with regard to the expectations placed on you versus those put on conservatives. The disparity is so enormous that I doubt even the most dimwitted “both sides do it!” centrist pundits can deny it to themselves. Liberals are expected to argue politely and rationally, have our facts perfectly in order, and maintain a calm and pleasant demeanor at all times no matter what mendacious, hateful nonsense the other side is flinging at us. No concomitant expectation exists for conservatives. They are free to behave as poorly as they want and take whatever liberties with the truth they’d like, knowing that “both sides” will be blamed, which lets conservatives escape accountability and encourages them to see how much farther they can push the envelope.

In the conservative media entertainment complex, facts simply do not matter. They create a GOPropaganda talking point, often by pulling it out of their rearend, and they stick to it even when all the fact-checkers say they are wrong. See above: facts simply do not matter.

This is how the "big lie" technique of propaganda works. Repeat a lie often enough, and enough of the low information rubes who have heard it repeated often enough on hate radio and FAUX News will start to believe it as fact. "Yeah, I heard that somewhere." It is the business model of the conservative media entertainment complex.

The latest hyperventilating hysteria manufactured by the GOPropagandists of the conservative media entertainment complex is that President Obama is a "dictator" and a "tyrant" because he occasionally issues an executive order to accomplish some policy goal. In the conservative alternate reality, only policies approved by Tea-Publicans in Congress, and endorsed by their conservative media entertainment complex talking heads should ever become law, because only they are entitled to govern. Some of the more extreme Tea-Publicans have even suggested that President Obama should be impeached for issuing executive orders.

In that case, all prior U.S. presidents, excluding William Henry Harrison who fell ill and died only a month into office, should have been impeached as well. The fact is, President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any of his predecessors.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) apparently told the 113-member LGBT Equality Caucus that there is “no way” the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would pass this year. According to Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), who spoke with the Washington Blade, Boehner “said it wasn’t going to happen in this session.” The meeting took place sometime last week.

* * *

Boehner has previously claimed that the LGBT employment protections are “unnecessary.” In the meantime, it remains legal in 29 states to fire people for their sexual orientation and and in 33 states to fire people for their gender identity.

The big story today is that the independent federal privacy watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has concluded that the National Security Agency’s program to collect bulk phone call records has provided only “minimal” benefits in counterterrorism efforts, is illegal and should be shut down. No shit!

I said that back in 2005 when the New York Times first revealed the secret spy program of the Bush-Cheney regime. Congress, rather than impeach the Bush-Cheney regime for the most extensive violations of the U.S. Constitution ever, passed laws ex post facto to make the existing illegal spy program "legal" and to give it the imprimatur of congressional approval. The telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spy program were given immunity from civil liability. "Nothing to see here, move along."

The findings are laid out in a 238-page report, scheduled for release Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, that represent the first major public statement by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which Congress made an independent agency in 2007 and only recently became fully operational.

The report is likely to inject a significant new voice into the debate over surveillance, underscoring that the issue was not settled by a high-profile speechPresident Obama gave last week. Mr. Obama consulted with the board, along with a separate review group that last month delivered its own report about surveillance policies. But while he said in his speech that he was tightening access to the data and declared his intention to find a way to end government collection of the bulk records, he said the program’s capabilities should be preserved.

The Obama administration has portrayed the bulk collection program as useful and lawful while at the same time acknowledging concerns about privacy and potential abuse. But in its report, the board lays out what may be the most detailed critique of the government’s once-secret legal theory behind the program: that a law known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the F.B.I. to obtain business records deemed “relevant” to an investigation, can be legitimately interpreted as authorizing the N.S.A. to collect all calling records in the country.

The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”

[The Commission's] prescriptions are very likely to please voting reformers, though they probably will cite areas where the panel could have gone farther. The key recommendations are improved voter registration through online registration and interstate exchange of voter lists, to ensure accuracy and speed the process; expansion of early voting; and improved voting technology.

One of the most important things about the report is that it unabashedly identifies our voting difficulties as a national problem that requires a national solution. “We view the recommendations as broad-based solutions to common problems evident on a national scale,” the report says. “The recommendations in this report are targeted at common problems shared by all or most jurisdictions. For the most part, they are of a size that should fit all.”

The report does discuss some regional variations, but this is a clear declaration of the scope of the problem, and the required scope of the solution. Indeed, the report recommends the creation of a national standard: “no citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.”

“Some had eschewed national solutions, or any kinds of efforts to fix these problems, by suggesting they’re so particular and local that they can’t be solved with national policy,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, tells me. “This sets a national standard for judging our election performance against. Here is a bipartisan group with strong credibility from both parties, strongly putting their thumb on the scale for national solutions.”

The U.S. Supreme Court at its Conference on Friday considered the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down the Arizona Tea-Publican legislature's 20-week abortion restrictions, Horne v. Isaacson (13-402).This case was not among the eight cases granted immediately after the Conference on Friday. Additional orders from the January 10 Conference are due on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. EST.

Monday is also the first day of the January sitting.On Monday the Court will hear oral arguments in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the challenge to the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. The patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy, George Will, clutches his pearls and whines mightily about the president's recess appointments, while ignoring the unprecedented partisan obstruction of the president's appointments by the Tea Party tyranny of the minority in A defining moment for the Court, while the New York Times editorializes today, correctly, Protect the President’s Appointments. That's a big "screw you George Will."

On both Tuesday and Wednesday one or more opinions in argued cases are expected to be announced. The campaign finance case of McCutcheon v. FEC heard in October? It's possible.

I got the following email from Mesa Mayor and (now) GOP candidate for AZ Governor Scott Smith:

Friend,

Today, I was honored to file paperwork to begin my campaign for Governor of Arizona.

For the past six years as Mayor of Mesa, I have shown how governing using conservative principles of efficient, effective and limited government can create opportunity and help individuals and businesses succeed. I am confident the experience and successes I have gained as mayor can be a model for success for all of Arizona.

As Governor, my number one priority for Arizona will be to build a healthy economy, get Arizonans great jobs and brighten the future for our children.

As Mayor of Mesa, I dealt with a $62 million shortfall caused by the economy by reducing spending, reforming government operations, and eliminating burdensome regulations. Mesa residents are paying less in taxes than they were before I became Mayor.

I also brought economic opportunity by keeping the Chicago Cubs spring training in town, recruiting 5 private universities to our downtown, and led the effort to bring Apple to Arizona.

As a business owner, I turned around a troubled company into a $200 million company and looked at opportunities to create jobs and work in areas other builders had long ignored. I am proud of the success we achieved and the Arizonans we employed. I also know how hard it is when Washington bureaucrats force ill-conceived policies like Obamacare on the American people. As Governor I will stand up to Barack Obama and work with our Congressional delegation to replace it.

I am pro-life, support traditional marriage, am a strong proponent of Second Amendment rights, and believe Governor Brewer was right to demand the Federal Government secure our border.

I am a man of faith and it is at the core of who I am.

In addition, I am the only candidate in this race who as an executive in government has actually put true conservative principles into action to bring economic opportunity to Arizona while also shrinking the size of government.

Our state has amazing potential to lead the nation in job growth and economic prosperity. With continued conservative leadership, we can bring more companies like Apple to Arizona.

We can create additional high paying jobs for Arizonans while keeping fiscal discipline with government spending.

We can create a world-class education system for our children while also giving parents control over where their child attends school.

We can hold true to our conservative principles while also being leaders who bring people together to solve the challenges we face.

We can do this together and I ask that you please take a moment to join our campaign. Together, we can make Arizona the greatest state in America to live, work, and raise our families.

Sincerely,

Scott Smith

That's standard right wing boilerplate there: anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-gun, "school choice", drown the government. God, Obama-bashing. Yet I'm still being told what a nice, pragmatic, and moderate man he is. Of course I anticipate the inevitable protest: "Oh but you know he's just doing that for the primary!". Unless Scott Smith has given you his personal assurance that the uber-conservative stances he's taken are simply a ruse to fool Republican primary voters, you have no way of knowing that. If he hasn't told you that then you should realize that you are pinning your hopes on Smith being someone different from who he tells you he fundamentally is. I can tell you from my dating days that that is not a good idea.

With full implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), January 2014 marks the beginning of a new era in health insurance in the US.

For the chronically uninsured and for those with pre-existing conditions, it's been a long and financially perilous wait for all of the ACA benefits to kick in.

For anti-government, conservative ideologues, the three-year waiting period gave them time to mercilessly attack reform that will provide insurance for millions of Americans, spread layers of misinformation about "Obamacare," hold dozens of meaningless repeal votes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and hold the country hostage for 16 days in a multi-million-dollar government shutdown fiasco.

Today, December 23, 2013 is the cut-off date for enrollment in ACA insurance plans which begin January 1, 2014; the final deadline for ACA enrollment is March 31, 2014. Since the beginning of December, I have been shopping the healthcare marketplace on behalf of the ultra-small business that I work for--The American Journal of Medicine. On Friday, I submitted our final paperwork to our insurance broker.

This is the story of one small business' route to "affordable" care.

Our Journey

Our journey began long before the premier of Healthcare.gov, the much-maligned ACA enrollment website, and even before the ACA was signed into law in 2010. At the Journal, we had been unhappy with our health insurance plan through Aetna for years. Like clockwork, the cost went up 10-25% each year, forcing us to rethink coverage multiple times in order to live within our budget. We also were dissatisfied with the limited number of even more expensive alternative plans offered to us. The Journal's editorial pages have been pushing for Medicare for all for years and broke the stories about medical bankruptcy in 2009 and continued medical bankruptcy under Romneycare in Massachusetts in 2011. Consequently, we were ready for the public option back in 2009; today, we're just glad that the ACA made it through the Republican gauntlet and the Supreme Court. Unlike recent news stories about people and small businesses wanting to keep their existing healthcare plans, we were waiting with baited breath for three years to dump our plan.

The bottomline is that with Obamacare, the Journal -- and the emplopyees-- will pay less for healthcare insurance. Read about our ACA Marketplace experiences and lessons learned after the jump.

Chris Hayes on his program All In has been doing a series this week called "Bizarro Congress," a Congress that actually does its job addressing the needs of the country, instead of the less than "less than do nothing" 113th Congress we actually have now -- the Worst. Congress. Ever.

Last month Senate Democrats finally exercised the constitutional option (aka the nuclear option as preferred by the media villagers) to end the Senate's super-majority cloture rule for debate, colloquially known as the filibuster. This weapon of mass destruction had been used by Tea-Publicans to paralyze the U.S. Senate and to render it entirely dysfunctional.

Democrats successfully utilized new Senate rules Tuesday to confirm one of President Obama's picks to serve on a key federal court and to proceed with final debate on another nominee to lead a federal housing agency.

Under new rules requiring just a majority of senators to agree to proceed to final debate on most confirmation votes, senators voted 56 to 38 to confirm Patricia A. Millett to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, one of the nation's most influential federal courts. She will be the first of three picks by Obama to join what is broadly considered the second-most important federal court in the nation because it handles cases regarding federal regulations.

President Barack Obama, along wth former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, were among almost a hundred world leaders and dignitaries from around the globe who paid tribute to Nelson Mandela today in a memorial service in South Africa.

The conservative media entertainment complex, which has alternatively been trashing Nelson Mandela since his death because Ronaldus Magnus and Dick Cheney once branded him a terrorist, or trashing conservative politicians who offered words of praise for Mandela following his death, or engaging in revisionist history as they are wont to do, had something else they wanted to focus on today: a reception line. Obama greets world leaders. And what, pray tell, got the clowns of conservative media all worked up in feigned outrage?

Obama shook hands with world leaders, including Cuba's President Raul Castro. Oh Noes!

On Wednesday, President Obama discussed the twin challenges of growing income inequality and shrinking economic mobility and how they pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream. Read the Transcript (excerpt):

[W]e know that people’s frustrations run deeper than these most recent political battles. Their frustration is rooted in their own daily battles -- to make ends meet, to pay for college, buy a home, save for retirement. It’s rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them. And it’s rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be better off than they were. They may not follow the constant back-and-forth in Washington or all the policy details, but they experience in a very personal way the relentless, decades-long trend that I want to spend some time talking about today. And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain -- that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.

I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American. It’s why I ran for President. It was at the center of last year’s campaign. It drives everything I do in this office. And I know I’ve raised this issue before, and some will ask why I raise the issue again right now. I do it because the outcomes of the debates we’re having right now -- whether it’s health care, or the budget, or reforming our housing and financial systems -- all these things will have real, practical implications for every American. And I am convinced that the decisions we make on these issues over the next few years will determine whether or not our children will grow up in an America where opportunity is real.

The military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisienhower warned Americans against in Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, needs an enemy -- real or imagined -- to justify the trillions of dollars spent on national security and defense.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) prepares an annual series of reports on international defense spending, The Military Balance 2013 (subscriber-only). In its press release, Military Balance 2013 Press Statement | IISS, the IISS notes that while "the Pentagon was already implementing cuts of $487 billion over ten years, and as a result of sequestration will now need to make additional reductions of $600bn over ten years," . . . "It needs to be remembered, however, that the defense budget of the United States still equals that of the next 14 nations combined (Bar Chart) and the United States still intends to remain engaged globally."

Then there is the establishment media, led by the Washington Post, which is home to Neocons who believe in a Pax Americana empire through military superiority and global domination. The establishment media serves to create the narratives for crises and conflicts and enemies of the United States to maintain taxpayer funding to the military-industrial complex, as well as U.S. interventions abroad. War and the threats of war are big business, and has made a lot of people extremely wealthy.

The military-industrial complex and the establishment media have a vested financial interest in maintaining wars and the threats of wars. If peace were to break out, they could no longer justify the trillions of dollars spent on national security and defense ans marketing war.

"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1817.

The Founding Fathers thoroughly considered super-majority voting and rejected it in favor of a simple majority vote. So for all those so-called Constitutional conservatives who claim to believe in "originalism" out there, the Senate cloture rule, i.e. the filibuster, is not provided for in the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers identifed limited circumstances where a super-majority vote is required in the Constitution: conviction for impeachment in the Senate (Article 1, Section 3); expulsion of a member of a house of Congress (Article 1, Section 5); overriding a presidential veto (Article 1, Section 7); ratification of a treaty by the Senate (Article 2, Section 2); passing a constitutional amendment by Congress (Article 5); calling a constitutional convention by state legislatures (Article 5); ratifying a constitutional amendment by the states (Article 5).

Later amendments included restoring the ability of certain Confederate rebels to serve in the government (14th Amendment); approval of the removal of the president from his position after the vice president and cabinet approve removal and the president contests removal (25th Amendment).

The Senate cloture rule, i.e., the filibuster, was "inadvertently" created by the Senate in 1806. Political scientist Sarah Binder testified before the Senate in 2010 about the origin of the filibuster, with its Founding Father as the outgoing Vice President, Aaron Burr.

Binder said Burr told the Senate in 1805 that it should eliminate a rule that automatically cut off floor debate, called the previous question motion, because he thought it wasn’t needed.

“So when Aaron Burr said ‘get rid of the previous question motion,’ the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book,” she said.

The first Senate filibuster took place in 1837, so it took the Senate about 31 years to refine the procedure. But the name “filibuster” wasn’t used to describe the tactic until 1863 in the Senate.

The filibuster had been used sparingly over the years, until recent years when the anti-government insurrectionist Tea-Publican Party made the filibuster a "weapon of mass destruction" to destroy the federal government, requiring the 60 vote threshold for even the most routine and mundane business of the Senate. The Senate has been rendered entirely dysfunctional by paralysis from the insurrectionist Tea-Publican abuse of the Senate filibuster -- directly undermining the principles of constitutional democracy.

The one political pundit who pisses me off more than any other, mostly because he is treated as credible and "intelligent" by other media villagers, is the patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy, George Will. Just because Will uses the entire dictionary in his columns does not make him "intelligent." If you actually follow the substance of what he says, he is a conservative ideological extremist. Just because he is not a bomb thrower like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity does not make him any more credible.

Arizona has its own version of the patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy, a George Will mini-me if you will, Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic. This conservative ideological extremist sets me off in the same way that George Will does.

Here is the latest example of how mini-me at the Republic lives in the shadow his role model, George Will.

"It looks to a great many of us [GOPropagandists] to be illegal," he added, referring to the so "fix" that will give insurance regulators the leeway of allowing low-quality insurance plans to continue for additional year. "What we're told in grade school when we study civics is in that building behind you are the two legislative chambers of the federal government, the Senate and the House. It turns out, there's a third. It's called the White House press room, into which the president can, on a whim, sashay and rewrite laws."

"I do think this is a constitutional scandal," Will said. "Suppose the next Republican president -- and there will be another Republican president -- comes into the press room sometime and says, 'You know, I really think the capital gains tax does not serve the national interest so we're just, as an act of executive discretion, going to quit enforcing that for a few years. That's not the rule of law."

Dean Baker has a must-read post at the Huffington Post for all those panicky Democrats in Congress -- and also Bill Clinton -- who care more about the politics of elections than getting public policy right on health care. The media focus should be on the regulation of predatory insurers engaged in consumer fraud, not on a campaign pledge President Obama made. The media is giving these predatory insurers a pass. The Obama Pledge on Keeping Your Insurance:

President Obama has been getting a lot of grief in the last few weeks over his pledge that with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, people would be able to keep their insurance if they like it. The media have been filled with stories about people across the country who are having their insurance policies terminated, ostensibly because they did not meet the requirements of the ACA. While this has led many to say that Obama was lying, there is much less here than meets the eye.

First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.

The plans being terminated because they don't meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA. [i.e., consumer fraud]

However if the insurers didn't tell their clients that the new plans would only be available for a short period of time, the blame would seem to rest with the insurance companies, not the ACA. After all, President Obama did not promise people that he would keep insurers from developing new plans that will not comply with the provisions of the ACA.

President Obama stated on the ending of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy:

Today, the discriminatory law known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is
finally and formally repealed. As of today, patriotic Americans in
uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve
the country they love. As of today, our armed forces will no longer
lose the extraordinary skills and combat experience of so many gay and
lesbian service members. And today, as Commander in Chief, I want those
who were discharged under this law to know that your country deeply
values your service.

It took the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married to end Defense Department regulations that discriminated against gay and
lesbian service members. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had the Armed Forces review their rules and regulations and bring them into compliance with the Supreme Court ruling by September of this year.

But several Southern states with anti-gay benefits state laws have chosen to defy the Department of Defense orders with respect to their National Guard units asserting the tired old Neo-Confederate "states' rights" defense. These states continue to discriminate against patriotic Americans -- the few who volunteer to proudly serve in their country's Armed Forces to defend your feeedoms -- simply because they are legally wed gay and lesbian service members. These states clearly do not respect nor value their proud military service.

All this faux outrage from the conservative media entertainment complex and Tea-Publican politicians over insurance cancellation notices is a disgusting spectacle to behold.

Essentially what the right-wing is arguing for is continuation of the status quo of a health insurance market that was completely broken. One where people were at the mercy of unscrupulous insurance companies who would sell you a crappy health insurance policy with a low premium, but with high out-of-pocket costs and no coverage for serious illness or medical procedures, preexisting condition exclusions, annual limits -- and frequently cancelled after its term of one year expired. Consumers with a pre-exisitng condition were uninsurable at any price.

In essence, the right-wing is defending health insurance consumer fraud and victimizing consumers. The fact that some people are happy with being victimized by insurers with a crappy health insurance policy and no coverage speaks more to their shortcomings -- "please take my money for nothing in return, i love throwing my money away!" These are not the kind of people who should determine sound public policy.

NBC's Chuck Todd asked President Obama about the people losing their
health insurance despite his promise that "anyone who likes their plan
can keep it." (See the video and read the transcript here.)

"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," Obama replied.

The answer is a bit of a dodge. People aren't finding themselves in
this situation based on the president's promises. They're finding
themselves in this situation based on his policy. And Obama isn't
apologizing for the policy.

"Before the law was passed, a lot of these plans, people thought they
had insurance coverage," he said. "And then they'd find out that they
had huge out of pocket expenses. Or women were being charged more than
men. If you had preexisting conditions, you just couldn't get it at
all."

Obama was wrong to promise that everyone who liked their insurance
could keep it. For a small minority of Americans, that flatly isn't
true. But the real sin would've been leaving the individual insurance
market alone.

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post is the lead writer for "The Fix" column, which is the Post's version of the D.C. media villager insider gossip at POLITICOTiger Beat on The Potomac. The Fix column loves to waste time on campaign speculation years in advance before anyone has even announced as a candidate, weighing who is up and who is down as the front-runner in the conventional wisdom of the Beltway media villagers, who unbelievably get paid to write this crap.

On Saturday, during a short reporting trip to New Jersey, I watched Gov. Chris Christie campaign in Somers Point and captured a moment that quickly got memed. Over the weekend I've seen the photo I tweeted of teacher Melissa Tomlinson being lectured by Christie get copied
on dozens of Twitter accounts and blogs. This isn't a #humblebrag—just
saying, I was surprised that "Christie takes exception to protesting
teacher" was a story in November 2013.

But here's what I saw. After the rally, Christie made his way back to
his campaign bus, flanked by low-key security guards. Tomlinson, who
had been carrying a sign and handing out fliers from her Badass Teachers
Association, asked Christie why he'd called New Jersey schools "failure
factories." Christie rounded on her, blurting out that he was sick of
"you people."

"This story—oh really? They have more money now than they’ve ever had
before. This is an old story from you folks, and they fail because you
guys are failing in those schools. Have you ever sent your child to one
of those schools?

"You portray us as the bad guys," said Tomlinson.

"Guess what, this is the most money the school has ever spent on education in the history of this state," said Christie.

Here in the United States, we're united by a fundamental principle:
we're all created equal and every single American deserves to be treated
equally in the eyes of the law. We believe that no matter who you are,
if you work hard and play by the rules, you deserve the chance to
follow your dreams and pursue your happiness. That's America's promise.

That's why, for instance, Americans can't be fired from their jobs just
because of the color of their skin or for being Christian or Jewish or a
woman or an individual with a disability. That kind of discrimination
has no place in our nation. And yet, right now, in 2013, in many states
a person can be fired simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
transgender.

As a result, millions of LGBT Americans go to work every day fearing
that, without any warning, they could lose their jobs -- not because of
anything they've done, but simply because of who they are.

It's offensive. It's wrong. And it needs to stop, because in the
United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a
fireable offense.

That's why Congress needs to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act,
also known as ENDA, which would provide strong federal protections
against discrimination, making it explicitly illegal to fire someone
because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This bill has
strong bipartisan support and the support of a vast majority of
Americans. It ought to be the law of the land.

Several "Red States" have had their national guard units refuse to process requests for same-sex partner benefits, despite the Department of Defense (DoD) having brought its rules and regulations into compliance in September with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Apparently these "Red State" Neo-Confederates have decided to engage in massive resistance to the Supreme Court's decision, much the way some of these same states did in response to the Supreme Court decision ending segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. It took Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson nationalizing state guard units to enforce Supreme Court decisions for the desegregation of public schools. There is no reason to believe that President Obama will not faithfully execute the laws of the United States in the same manner if necessary.

Last night, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a speech to the Anti-Defamation League in which he addressed this "Red State" refusal to comply with DoD rules and regulations regarding same-sex partner benefits. Secretary Hagel's address to the ADL (excerpt):

The balance between security and civil rights sends an important message to the world. At the Department of Defense, we work to preserve America’s individual liberties as well as defend our freedom.

When the Supreme Court issued its decision on the Defense of Marriage Act this summer, the Department of Defense immediately began working on providing the same benefits to all eligible spouses, regardless of sexual orientation. We did it because everyone who serves our country in uniform should receive the full benefits they earned, fairly and in accordance with the law. Everyone’s rights must be protected.

This means that all spouses of service members are entitled to DoD ID cards, and the benefits that come with them. But several states are refusing to issue these IDs to same-sex spouses at National Guard facilities. Not only does this violate the states’ obligations under federal law, their actions have created hardship and inequality by forcing couples to travel long distances to federal military bases to obtain the ID cards they’re entitled to.

This is wrong. It causes division among the ranks, and it furthers prejudice, which DoD has fought to extinguish.

Remember this bit of sacriligious pretentiousness from earlier this year?

Things have been on a downhill slide for Senator Marco "Big Gulp" Rubio ever since he lent his name to the Senate "Gang of Eight" immigration reform bill. He was AWOL during the recent Tea-Publican economic terrorist hostage taking of the federal debt ceiling and GOP government shutdown, which allowed Senator Joe McCarthy Ted "Calgary" Cruz to position himself as the latest darlin' of the foaming at the mouth radical Tea Party extremists whom once worshiped Rubio as their "savior."

"Big Gulp" has previously said that he no longer supports his own immigration reform bill, but now he says that he will also not support any conference committee markup of an immigration reform bill, because he needs to pander to the foaming at the mouth radical Tea Party extremists whom he needs for his narcissistic quest for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. Rubio Throws In The Towel On Immigration:

The most prominent conservative supporter of sweeping immigration
reform is calling on Congress to dial back the effort and instead focus
on making incremental changes, delivering a significant blow to the
prospects of reform.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) now opposes a
bicameral conference committee to reach a final resolution to the
Senate-passed bill, his spokesman said, arguing that the support is not
there for a comprehensive overhaul and that Congress should act where
there is consensus.

"The point is that at this time, the only
approach that has a realistic chance of success is to focus on those
aspects of reform on which there is consensus through a series of
individual bills," Alex Conant, a top spokesman for Rubio, told TPM in
an email. "Otherwise, this latest effort to make progress on immigration
will meet the same fate as previous efforts: failure."

Today I’m here with leaders from business, from labor, from faith
communities who are united around one goal -- finishing the job of
fixing a broken immigration system.

This is not just an idea whose time has come; this is an idea whose
time has been around for years now. Leaders like all of you have worked
together with Republicans and Democrats in this town in good faith for
years to try to get this done. And this is the moment when we should be
able to finally get the job done.

* * *

We should pass immigration reform. It’s good for our economy. It’s
good for our national security. It’s good for our people. And we
should do it this year.

Everybody knows that our current immigration system is broken.
Across the political spectrum, people understand that. We’ve known it
for years. It’s not smart to invite some of the brightest minds from
around the world to study here and then not let them start businesses
here -- we send them back to their home countries to start businesses
and create jobs and invent new products someplace else.

It’s not fair to businesses and middle-class families who play by the
rules when we allow companies that are trying to undercut the rules
work in the shadow economy, to hire folks at lower wages or no benefits,
no overtime, so that somehow they get a competitive edge from breaking
the rules. That doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t make sense to have 11 million people who are in this
country illegally without any incentive or any way for them to come out
of the shadows, get right with the law, meet their responsibilities and
permit their families then to move ahead. It’s not smart. It’s not
fair. It doesn’t make sense. We have kicked this particular can down
the road for too long.

Two new polls out this week demonstrate that the Tea-Publican governing-by-extortion strategy of taking the country hostage and shutting down the federal government, coupled with threatening to default on the full faith and credit of the United States has been devastating to the GOP. Will they learn their lesson? Nah.

While President Obama is under water on his approval rating at 44 percent to 52 percent disapprove, the approval of Congress remains in the ocean depths at 12 percent.

The CNN poll finds that Americans have more confidence in President Obama than the Republicans to deal with the major issues facing the country by
44-31. Among moderates, those numbers are 51-24; among indys they are
34-30; even 21 percent of Conservatives approve. Obama leads across all demographics by age, race, sex, education, income and region. Obama's lead among white (40-33) seniors (47-30), critical to the GOP in the midterm electorate, portends real trouble for the GOP.

Critically, the CNN poll finds that 54 percent of Americans think continued GOP control of the
House is bad for the country, including 59 percent of moderates and 53
percent of independents; even 32 percent of Conservatives say it is bad for the country. This negative view of the GOP holds across all demographics by age, race, sex, education, income and region. This negative view of the GOP among white (49-43) seniors (56-39) portends real trouble for the GOP. (Only the 65+ age group is evenly divided).

The CNN poll asked some granular questions about the Affordable Care Act aka "ObamaCare" that most polls do not. 41 percent approve and another 12 percent say ObamaCare is not liberal enough. Only 38 percent oppose ObamaCare as too liberal. By asking the granular questions rather than the error-prone approve or diapprove dichotomy that distorts results, the poll produced a more accurate result.

The TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, finds no love in this poll. 63 percent of poll respondents want to see him replaced as Speaker.

Senator Ted "Calgary" Cruz and his 'Tortilla Coast Tea-Publicans', with an assist from the "Demented" Jim DeMint at the Heritage Fund (Heritage Action) and his Leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, neutered the House GOP leadership last night and prevented any bill from coming to the floor.

The headlines this morning were deservedly unkind to the "Worst. Speaker. Ever.", the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner:

The GOP’s performance nicely reprises that scene in “Animal House” where
the marching band turns into a blind alley and row after row of plumed
morons plows into a brick wall, crumbling to the ground in an
unceremonious heap.

It's déjà vu all over again. "Boehner's Bunglers" led the Tea Party Animal House into the blind alley of complete failure.

It has been widely reported there are a large number of Republican congressmen and senators who say they
disagree with their House leadership strategy, and who say they want to
end the government shutdown.

But when it comes time to actually take a stand and put their votes
where their big mouths are, these mythical moderate Republicans are
always gutless wonders. Their votes rarely, if ever, materialize.

Democrats put forward a clean CR bill in the Senate on Saturday -- what these mythical moderate Republicans all say they are willing to vote for -- they could have voted to end the government shutdown today.

But these mythical moderate Republicans voted in lockstep with their
Tea Party economic terrorist captors holding the GOP hostage, and in a
classic case of Stockholm syndrome filibustered the Democratic clean CR bill. Just call them "Tania" from now on.

This was a critical lost opportunity. Voting to proceed to debate would have started the Senate's 30 hour rule for debate running so that the government could reopen early in the week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was open to amendments to fashion a compromise during debate. Instead, the clock is running down on the default bomb on October 17, and these gutless wonders are playing to run out the clock. Reid, McConnell begin bipartisan shutdown talks:

[T]he Senate, as expected, on Saturday rejected debate on a Democratic
plan to raise the federal debt ceiling for more than a year with no
strings attached. The party-line vote failed to meet the 60 vote
threshold needed to hold a vote on the proposal. [i.e., a GOP filibuster]

* * *

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) have launched discussions over a proposal to raise the
debt ceiling and end the government shutdown, after talks between House
Republicans and President Obama reached an impasse.

Last week i suggested "It is time for a Grand Alliance between Democrats, establishment
Republicans, and centrist moderates in a united front" against the far-right radical extremist elements of the Tea Party.

As
the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of
the country’s most influential business executives have come to a
conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are
carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of
dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.

Their
frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade
association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were
considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers
who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington.

Such an effort would thrust Washington’s traditionally cautious and pragmatic business lobby into open warfare with the Tea Party faction, which has grown in influence since the 2010 election and won a
series of skirmishes with the Republican establishment in the last two
years.

“We
are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of
conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment
than it has been in the past,” said David French, the top lobbyist at
the National Retail Federation. “We have come to the conclusion that
sitting on the sidelines is not good enough.”

Charles Piece at Esquire does a weekly post he calls "This week in the laboratories of democracy" in which he takes a look at what is going on in the states. (When it comes to Arizona, Jon Stewart at The Daily Show more accurately describes Arizona as "the meth lab of democracy"). This Week In The Laboratories Of Democracy:

Welcome back to our weekly survey of what's goin'
down in the several state where, as we know, the real work of
governmentin' gets done and where to live outside the law you must be
honest.

The week was highlighted by a lovely lady state representative from
where-the-fk-else? Arizona, who took advantage of a nearby microphone to
beat Mr. Godwin into a fine powder, and to question the existence of testicles among local law-enforcement.

"Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime
for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer," Barton wrote.
"[W]here are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service
Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?"

Carl Bernstein was the guest on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday night for a segment on media false equivalency -- the "both sides are to blame" default setting of media reporting (especially the Associated Press). So pay attention media villagers, Bernstein wants a word with you. (Video below the fold).

This month’s fiscal crisis is one such situation. One party (in fact,
essentially one wing of the Republican party), seeking the elimination
or delay of Obamacare,
precipitated a government shutdown and threatened to force a default on
U.S. debt. Period. There was no corresponding threat or demand on the
Democratic or White House side; having gotten the Affordable Care Act
into law three years ago, they are not in the situation of saying, “Pass
Obamacare or we shut ‘er down.”

That’s the situation. To accurately describe it, as news coverage
should, is not to endorse an ideology. It’s not to say that Obamacare is
good or bad. It’s not to say that Republicans do or don’t have good
reasons to oppose it. It’s not to say that Democrats have or haven’t
sought political benefit in the aftermath. But it correctly places the
impetus where it belongs.

Much of the big-picture news coverage has been clear on this.
But as the crisis dragged on, more news stories framed the story as
old-fashioned bipartisan gridlock between two equally culpable,
stubborn, useless sides. It becomes “Boehner, White House Harden
Stances” (Washington Post); “Congress Plays Chicken” (a CNN chyron this morning); “each side trying to blame the other” (Politico).

“Both sides are to blame; the truth is somewhere in between”–that has always been the political media’s happy, safe place . . .

* * *

But in a case like the fiscal crisis, false equivalence matters. It’s
the difference between reporting an extraordinary event and an ordinary
one, which in this case is crucial to how the story plays out
politically. It’s a matter of whether “not changing current law” becomes
redefined as “getting 100% of what you want.” If this is just one more
case of those knuckleheads in Washington “digging in their heels,”
“playing the blame game,” and so on, it normalizes the situation for the
news audience: it sends the tacit message that it is entirely ordinary,
every so often, to have a forced debt crisis that reasonable people
resolve through “compromise” by renegotiating major pieces of U.S. law.

Time Magazine is still in business? Who knew. In any event, Time has the perfect cover this week on newsstands.

So-called GOP "moderates" are held hostage by their radical extremist Tea Party captors, and in a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, are empathetic and sympathetic towards their captors to the point of joining with them. They are all "Tania" now.

Together, these Tea-Publican economic terrorists have taken America hostage and are threatening to blow up the American economy and to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless Democrats and President Obama capitulate to their extortionary hsotage demand to deny access to health care to millions of their fellow American citizens, and more. Governing-by-extortion is a Tea-Publican tyranny of the minority. Economic terrorism is undemocratic and un-American.

South Carolina, the home of Senator John C. Calhoun, the intellectual force behind states' rights and nullification, under which states could declare null and void federal laws which they viewed as unconstitutional, and who was an inspiration to the secessionists of 1860–61.

South Carolina, whose Confederate militia batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the first shots of the American Civil War in 1861.

South Carolina, which has refused to accept its defeat in the Civil War or to accept the post-Civil War Amendments, in particular the 14th Amendment, which forever ended any debate over Sen. Calhoun's theories of nullification and secession.

I stopped watching the Sunday Morning bobbleheads years ago. Why should I ruin a perfectly good Sunday morning watching incompetent infotainment actors pretending to be journalists? But I have relatives staying with me this weekend, and they insisted.

After sitting through the interminable torture of the Sunday Morning bobbleheads and their repetition of GOPropaganda talking points like the loyal little stenographers they are, all I can say is: "New Rule: cancel all the Sunday Morning bobblehead shows" -- please, just make it stop!

I swear, American's I.Q. will increase a good 10 points after the first couple of weeks in the absence of these preening infotainment actors pretending to be journalists.

Who set me off in particular was Savannah Guthrie, who was sitting in as host of NBC's Meet The Press Gregory this week. I remember Savannah from when she was a TV news reporter for KVOA here in Tucson. I didn't think much of her then, and I think even less of her now. This morning she was the perfect little parrot for the GOPropanda talking point, "Why won't the president just sit down and negotiate with the Republicans?" (squawk!)

It's not just Savannah. I have heard the insufferable Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley at CNN parrot the same GOPropanda talking point all week.

Do you know who is the only infotainment actor pretending to be a journalist who answered this GOPropaganda talking point correctly? CNN's Fareed Zakaria.

So let me get this right. The Tea-Publican anti-government insurgency that wants to destroy the federal government is suddenly concerned about federal government employees? The very same federal employees they despise and villify as blood-sucking parasites every chance they get? One has to have been living in a cave for the past 30 years to fall for this bullshit.

Today there is a New
Confederacy, an insurgent political force that has captured the
Republican Party and is taking up where the Old Confederacy left off in
its efforts to bring down the federal government.

No shelling of a
Union fort, no bloody battlefield clashes, no Good Friday assassination
of a hated president — none of that nauseating, horrendous stuff. But
the behavior is, nonetheless, malicious and appalling.

The New
Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy
was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or taking 620,000 lives, as did the Old Confederacy’s instigated Civil War.

Not
stopping there, however, the New Confederacy aims to destroy the full
faith and credit of the United States, setting off economic calamity at
home and abroad — all in the name of “fiscal sanity.”

Its members
are as extreme as their ideological forebears. It matters not to them,
as it didn’t to the Old Confederacy, whether they ultimately go down in
flames. So what? For the moment, they are getting what they want: a
federal government in the ditch, restrained from seeking to create a
more humane society that extends justice for all.

Political blogs lit up this afternoon with word that Democrats plan to circulate a discharge petition to discharge a clean CR bill to a vote in the House, as reported in The Hill. Dems plan discharge petition to force vote on ending shutdown. A discharge petition would require a minimum of 18 Republicans willing to sign on and to abandon their House leadership on its government shutdown hostage strategy.

Now, there are a large number of Republican congressmen who say they disagree with their House leadership strategy, and who say they want to end the government shutdown. The GOP civil war has been playing out in the media for weeks for all the world to see.

But when it comes time to actually take a stand and put their votes where their big mouths are, these mythical moderate Republicans are always gutless wonders. Their votes rarely, if ever, materialize.

Democrats' attempted a procedural move today to vote on a clean CR bill -- what these mythical moderate Republicans say they are willing to vote for -- they could have voted to end the government shutdown today.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, apparently sharing Obama
administration alarm about a possible debt default, has told colleagues
he will act to raise the federal debt limit even if he has to rely on
the votes of House Democrats, GOP aides said Thursday.

* * *

With concern shifting to a deadline in two weeks to raise the debt
limit, Boehner has told colleagues he will do whatever is necessary to
avoid defaulting on the federal debt, including relying on House
Democrats to help pass a a debt-ceiling increase, according to GOP aides
familiar with the conversations.

* * *

The aides indicated that Boehner is willing to risk infuriating some
of the most conservative House GOP lawmakers by relying on a majority of
Democratic votes — and less than a majority of Republicans — to pass a
debt-ceiling increase.

Doing so would reprise a strategy that
ensured passage earlier this year of measures to avert another fiscal
impasse, to renew the Violence Against Women Act and to provide federal
relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Such a maneuver in effect
would suspend the so-called “Hastert Rule,” an unwritten governing
principle of Republican House speakers since the 1990s when the chamber
has been under GOP control.

“Lookit, the Hastert rule didn’t exist,” former House speaker J. Dennis
Hastert (R-Ill.) said in an interview Thursday. “What happened is you
lined up 218 votes.”

“When I used the term ‘majority of the majority,’ that was in one specific case,” said Hastert.

In case you missed it, that was former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert giving his blessing to Weeper of the House John Boehner to move legislation with a simple majority vote in the House, you know, the way democracy is supposed to work.

The latest GOP gimmick comes from Speaker of the House Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz, an interloper in the House, whose Plan E is an a la carte funding of government agencies that the GOP will be embarrassed by if the Tea Party "Suicide Caucus" Shutdown continues - for veterans’ programs, national
parks and museums, and services in Washington - and to punish government agencies it detests, like the EPA and the IRS.

The Republicans suffered embarrassing losses on Tuesday night when three
bills — to finance veterans’ programs, national parks and museums, and
services in Washington — failed to get the two-thirds majority required
to pass under fast-track procedures.

The list of federal programs being singled out for financing is
expanding. Democrats criticized House Republicans on Tuesday for
choosing national parks over cancer research at the National Institutes
of Health. The response: a measure to finance the health institutes,
too. Congress had already passed legislation to make sure active duty
uniformed military forces would continue to be paid. Criticized for
leaving out the National Guard and Reserves, Republicans added them to
the favored list.

The White House has already threatened a veto.

“Consideration of appropriations bills in a piecemeal fashion is not a
serious or responsible way to run the United States Government,” the
White House budget office said. “Instead of opening up a few Government
functions, the House of Representatives should reopen all of the
Government.”

* * *

Democrats say they will not negotiate any changes to the health care
law, nor will they reopen the government piece by piece. To do so, they
said, would only encourage Republican brinkmanship.

Steve Benen has a must read post today that crystalizes what is reallly at stake in this Tea Party "Suicide Caucus" Shutdown: the principle of majority rule in a democracy. 'Defending the health of our democracy':

"If a faction consists of less than a majority," wrote James Madison
in Federalist No. 10, "relief is supplied by the republican principle,
which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote.
It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it
will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the
Constitution." The idea that voting expresses the popular will, that
elections' results have consequences, is fundamental to democracy. It is
also an idea that Republicans are determined to ignore.

This time is different. What is at stake in this government shutdown
forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the
principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President
Obama must not give in to this hostage taking -- not just because
Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves
is at stake. [...]

If democracy means anything, it means that, if you are outvoted, you
accept the results and prepare for the next election. Republicans are
refusing to do that. It shows contempt for the democratic process.

President Obama is not defending health care. He's defending the
health of our democracy. Every American who cherishes that should stand
with him.

It's fair to say that Friedman, love him or hate him, is
not a partisan bomb-thrower or a reflexive ideologue. I don't imagine
it was easy for him to write a column accusing Republican lawmakers of
attacking democratic norms and abandoning the standards of the American
tradition, which makes it all the more important that he did so anyway.

The White House “is for cutting spending. We’re for
reforming our tax code, for reforming entitlements,” said senior White
House adviser Dan Pfeiffer.

“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” he added.

Republicans claim this constitutes comparing them to terrorists.

And rightly so. It is time to call a spade a spade and to drop all this PC Cops poliitcally correct crap where we are required to treat the truly insane and outrageous as reasonable and acceptable. It is not.

The GOP's governing-by-extortion is way outside the norms of what is acceptable and reasonable in American politics. See James Fallows at The Atlantic, Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead: "As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a 'standoff,' a 'showdown,' a 'failure of leadership,' a sign of 'partisan gridlock,' or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism and an inability to see or describe what is going on." So I beg to differ with Steve Benen and Greg Sargent, whom I respect, on this PC Cops style point.

Steve Benen had an excellent post last week on the norms of American governance, and how the economic terrorists in the Tea-Publican Party have rejected these fundamental norms. Elections used to have consequences:

It may seem like ages ago, but about 10 months ago, the United States
held national elections. One party, the Republican Party, ran on a
fairly specific platform, near the top of which was a promise to destroy
the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Their rivals, the Democratic
Party, also had a platform, which included preservation of the
Affordable Care Act.

The "American people" were asked to make a choice. And they did.

At the presidential level, the Democratic candidate won with relative ease, and became only the sixth
presidential candidate in American history to win 51% of the popular
vote twice. In the U.S. Senate, Democrats not only held their majority
for the fourth consecutive election cycle, they also unexpectedly added
seats. In the U.S. House, Democratic candidates collectively won 1.4 million more votes than Republican candidates.

These
are not minor details. We have a constitutional system of government
and free national elections in which we, the people, help set a course
for our country. GOP candidate made their case, lost, and forfeited
their claims to a popular mandate.

"Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran."-- Senior Bush Official, May 2003

Remember this supremely arrogant statement from the Neocon war mongers who lied this country into an unnecessary and illegal war with Iraq, and triumphantly declared their willingness to take this country into another war with Iran?

President Barack Obama has an opportunity to turn this supreme arrogance on its head in a "Nixon goes to China" moment in U.S. diplomacy. I would not be suprised if this leads to a state visit by President Obama to Tehran in the next year or so in a major diplomatic initiative.

President Barack Obama and Iran's new president may meet briefly next
week for the first time, marking a symbolic but significant step toward
easing their countries' tense relationship. An exchange of letters
between the leaders already has raised expectations for a revival of
stalled nuclear talks.

* * *

Both Obama and Rouhani will be in New York next week for the annual
meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The White House hasn't ruled out
the possibility of a direct exchange, though spokesman Jay Carney said
no meeting is scheduled.

Obama has long said he would be open to
discussions with his Iranian counterparts if Tehran shows it is serious
about curbing its nuclear program.

"There have been a lot of
interesting things said out of Tehran and the new government - and
encouraging things," Carney said Thursday. "But actions speak louder
than words."

Whenever I have to fly somewhere, the inevitable question from the person sitting next to me comes up with a moment of dread, "Where are you from?" Admit it, don't you hesitate to answer that you are from Arizona out of embarrassment and not wanting to have to explain? Sure you do.

Whenever I talk to friends and relatives in other states and politics comes up, they always ask the same question: "What the f#%k is wrong with you people in Arizona? How is it possible for people to be so ignorant?"

Well I'll tell you: it is our corporate media in Arizona. I'll give you an example. Yesterday I explained the back story of what is going on with GOP plans to threaten a government shutdown and to default on the federal debt ceiling as its hostage demand to extort the defunding of "ObamaCare." The GOP is on Cruz-control to a government shutdown.

But if you read Arizona's two largest daily newspapers this morning, you got the alternate reality FAUX News GOP-spin that the GOP is trying to avoid a government shutdown by taking the country hostage to extort the defunding of "ObamaCare."

The Arizona Republic ran an AP report, Dodge default, defund Obamacare, GOP leaders say: "House Republicans vowed Wednesday to pass legislation that would prevent a partial government shutdown and avoid a historic national default while simultaneously canceling out President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, inaugurating a new round of political brinkmanship as critical deadlines approach."

The Arizona Daily Star has an online-only AP post, House to vote on stopgap funding bill, 'Obamacare': "The GOP-controlled House is cruising toward a vote to gut President Barack Obama's health care plan as part of a temporary funding bill to prevent a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1. While raising the possibility of a government closure, the latest GOP plan is actually aimed at avoiding one. GOP leaders are looking to shift the fight over health care to even more important legislation required to prevent the government from defaulting on its financial obligations." (The print edition was better with a report from McCaltchy News, not online, Showdown: House will tie government funding to defunding Obamacare.)

WTF? This AP (All Propaganda) reporting is the exact opposite of reality.

The TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, just lost control of the GOP caucus he ostensibly leads in the House to an interloper from the Senate, Texas demagogue Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz, who has mesmerized the Tea Party faction of the GOP caucus with his hair-brained scheme to defund "ObamaCare" by a threat to shut down the government. Ted Cruz Is Making Life Miserable For House Republicans:

For the last few weeks, House Speaker John Boehner has been trying to find a way to convince his caucus to vote for a bill that keeps the
government open after Sept. 30 without picking a fight over Obamacare. But a minority of his caucus has been insisting on defunding Obamacare, egged on by outside conservative groups and a handful of far-right Republican Senators, most importantly Ted Cruz (Texas).

On Wednesday, the TanMan gave in to demands from the radical Tea Party members of his GOP caucus, and agreed to proceed with the hair-brained scheme of "Calgary" Cruz to shut down the federal government. The tail is wagging the dog. Shutdown looms as House targets health-care law:

House Republican leaders announced Wednesday morning that they would
take a risky double-barreled attack on President Obama’s health-care
law, making it the cornerstone fight over government funding due to
expire Sept. 30 and the effort to lift the Treasury’s borrowing
authority.

Speaker John A. Boehner, flanked by his leadership
team, told reporters that the stopgap government funding bill that they
will advance Friday would yield to conservative demands of including a
rider to block funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare.

In addition, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor laid out his
party’s legislative grab bag of requests that will be attached to a bill
that would lift the debt ceiling, including a delay of the health law,
an overhaul of the tax code and approval of an energy pipeline running
from Canada to the gulf coast.

Obama immediately rejected that
strategy and, in a meeting with the nation’s top executives, said he
would oppose any effort to defund the health-care law or negotiate over
the debt limit.

First, today’s sharply polarized and strategically focused political
parties fit poorly with a constitutional system that anticipates
collaboration as well as competition within and across separated
institutions. As we initially wrote, parliamentary-style parties in a
separation-of-powers government are a formula for willful obstruction
and policy irresolution. The continuation of divided party government
and the promiscuous use of the filibuster after the 2012 election have
largely frustrated the policy direction affirmed by majority electorates
and supported in polls of voters taken since the election.

Second,
the Republican Party continues to demonstrate that it is an insurgent
force in our politics, one that aspires to rewrite the social contract
and role of government developed and affirmed over a century by both
major political parties. The old conservative GOP has been transformed
into a party beholden to ideological zealots, one that sees little need
to balance individualism with community, freedom with equality, markets
with regulation, state with national power, or policy commitments with
respect for facts, evidence, science, and a willingness to compromise.

These
two factors—asymmetric polarization and the mismatch between our
parties and governing institutions—continue to account for the major
share of our governing problems. But the media continues, for the most
part, to miss this story.

For all the media villages who have been playing the game of "show us the (classified) evidence" of chemical weapons use in Syria, the U.N. inspectors said Monday there is "clear and convincing evidence" that chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in an attack last month in Syria that killed hundreds of people. UN: 'Convincing evidence' of Syria chemical attack:

The findings represent the first official confirmation by scientific
experts that chemical weapons were used in Syria's civil war, but the
report left the key question of who launched the attack unanswered. The
rebels and their U.S. and Western supporters have said the regime of
President Bashar Assad was behind the Aug. 21 attack, while the Syrian
government and its closest ally, Russia, blame the rebels.

Note: The inspectors were mandated to report on whether chemical weapons were used and if so which ones — not on who was responsible.

And in Geneva, the chairman of a U.N. war crimes panel said it is
investigating 14 suspected chemical attacks in Syria, dramatically
escalating the stakes. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said the panel had not
pinpointed the chemical used or who is responsible.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented the U.N. inspectors' report
to a closed meeting of the U.N. Security Council before its release.

A couple of years ago, after the United States and its allies used
military force to help remove the Gadhafi's government from Libya, Sens.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) issued one of my
favorite Republican press releases ever. The two senators, who had
eagerly spent months touting U.S. military action in Libya, issued a joint statement commending the "British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE."

McCain
and Graham eventually said Americans can be "proud of the role our
country" played, but they nevertheless condemned the Obama
administration's "failure" to act in Libya the way the GOP senators
preferred.

It was striking at the time for its bitterness -- the
United States had achieved its strategic goals, but instead of
celebrating or applauding Obama's success, Republicans pouted and
whined.

It's funny how history sometimes repeats itself. Over the
course of six days, the Obama administration pushed Syria into the
chemical weapons convention, helped create a diplomatic framework that
will hopefully rid Syria of its stockpiles, successfully pushed Russia
into a commitment to help disarm its own ally, quickly won support from
the United Nations and our allies, and did all of this without firing a
shot.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said his government plans to restart nuclear talks with world powers in New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly this month.

The “serious talks” should help lead to a “win-win” final outcome in the dispute over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program, Rouhani said in an interview on Iranian state-run television [last week]. The negotiations will involve the International Atomic Energy Agency and the so-called P5+1 group, made up of the five permanent UN Security Council members in addition to Germany, he said.

“The nuclear issue will be resolved soon if the other side
is serious,” he said. “The final result should be a win-win.
We are ready for it.”

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